On a lively spring morning, 1977, Danny Wright scanned the Pimlico clubhouse dining room from new heights. Trainer Billy Turner had hoisted the jockey and displayed him like an auction piece to a howling throng at the Alibi Breakfast, jaunty prelude to the Preakness Stakes.

Without saying a thing, the normally subdued Wright had driven the normally subdued Turner to impulse. Diners knew well the Turner-trained unbeaten Seattle Slew, and Wright sought to introduce them to his pending Preakness mount by wearing a T-shirt with CORMORANT stripped across the front and SEATTLE WHO? across the back, which Turner presented for all to see.

“I said, ‘Mr. Turner, please put me down,'” recounted Wright, a retired racetrack steward now 78 and still close to riding-fit at 116 pounds. “I was so embarrassed.”

But no less bullish on Cormorant, the J.P. Simpson-trained rocket that had won seven straight stakes before his Preakness prep, a second-place Withers. For Seattle Slew to beat Cormorant, Wright restated at ground level, he’d first have to catch Cormorant.

As the Preakness unfolded, Cormorant managed something no horse had done — he outran Seattle Slew to the far turn. “I had a double-nelson on him,” Wright said of the taut rein. “I’m thinkin’, Oh my God . . . smalltown boy’s gonna make it big today.” The thought blossomed and withered as Jean Cruguet advanced Seattle Slew outside the leader. “He comes by me with a double nelson, and he looks over and he says, ‘Where you think you’re goin’, jock?’ And he just blew me away.”

As Pimlico prepared for the 150th Preakness — the last before its scheduled demolition and multiyear conversion to a modern marvel — former and current racetrackers shared memories of Old Hilltop, from Preakness Day pearls to everyday whirls. The jocks’ room as a place to spoof a boxing legend? The Pimlico homestretch as scene to a Roman gladiator event? A spontaneous winner’s circle moment as a boy’s unwitting valentine to high-school girls?

Passions and more have burned at Pimlico since its grand opening on Oct. 25, 1870, the day a 3-year-old unknown named Preakness won the featured Dinner Party Stakes. Close to a century later, June 1966, jockey valet John Hess answered the phone at his Reisterstown home, hung up abruptly, grabbed 7-year-old son Michael and steered the family car toward Pimlico. They approached the track to find a twilight sky too soon blackened: The stately Members’ Clubhouse, an original hallmark outside the clubhouse turn, stood a specter cloaked by wreaths of flame and ribbons of hose water. Over six ensuing decades, Michael Hess surmised that the electrical fire robbed Pimlico of grandeur but not its spirit.

As a teenager on the stable-gate parking lot, Michael caught a ring of keys from Joe the Overseer, who nodded toward an Oldsmobile and barked, “Get that one up here.” Hess, unlicensed at 14, did as instructed, rewarded by the thrill and a few palm-slipped dollars.

Hess legitimately parked his first Preakness cars in 1974, the 99th edition Little Current won by plenty, and planned to work this 150th as one of few parkers still employed. The day attracts fancy cars and untold luminaries, he said, which sparked thoughts of Sugar Ray Leonard.

The champ in five weight divisions toured Pimlico with a small entourage one afternoon. The jockeys’ room part of the itinerary, valet John Hess, Michael’s prankster dad, prepared a greeting. As the group made its way in, Hess placed on the floor a rectangular wooden box with an opening at the rear, through which emerged a furry tail.

“Hey champ,” Hess said, “y’ever seen a mongoose?”

Heads shook, brows furrowed. Hess sprang the box latch, and a brown terror raced out, something between a ferret and a Tasmanian Devil. Leonard and friends darted, hopped and scattered. The mongoose came up short, halted by a string around its tail.

Pimlico as dance hall? Chris McCarron made the discovery in 1987, 13 years after he rode a season-record 546 winners, mostly in Maryland, as champion apprentice. Back at Pimlico to take Derby hero Alysheba through the Preakness, McCarron stepped onto the porch outside the jockeys’ room hours before the big race, peered through the glass into Pimlico’s crowded dining room and made eye contact with his sisters, Corinne, Barbara and Colette.

“They spotted me, so they got up and they started dancing,” said McCarron, now a Kentucky retiree. One bewildered patron asked the McCarron sisters, “What on earth are you ladies doing?” The answer came swiftly: “We’re doing the Sheba Shuffle.”

Alysheba rallied to wrest Preakness glory from Bet Twice by a half-length.

Ask Maryland’s retired Hall of Fame trainer for a Pimlico memory and he answers in context. “I won five races there” on a single card, King T. Leatherbury said without boast or fanfare. “And five at Bowie, five at Laurel, five at Timonium . . . “

And 6,508 in all. “Even Brittany hasn’t done that,” Leatherbury said of Mrs. Russell, Maryland’s top-ranked trainer each of the past two years.

Donald Barr saddled his first Pimlico starter in 1980, a decade before Brittany’s birth, and figured he’d seen every strange on-track occurrence by the time he sent Purple Passion into the 1999 Maryland Breeders’ Cup Handicap, a salty sprint on the Preakness undercard. The ensuing spectacle made him revise his thinking.

“I’m tryin’ to see the race, but I’m bein’ shuffled all over the place,” Barr said, native New England still flavoring his words. “The guys are runnin’ me outta everywhere. The cop says, ‘You can’t stay here. You can’t stay there.’  I wound up standin’ in the winner’s circle and almost gettin’ run outta there because it was the only place I could see the race.”

By the time he worked an undisturbed sightline, Barr said, the eight-horse field raced well through the far turn. He found Purple Passion rallying from mid-pack.

“He’s sittin’ pretty good, and he’s makin’ a move. Now they’re in the stretch. Wait — what’s that? . . . Oh my God! I couldn’t believe what I was lookin’ at.”

A young man in baggy shorts and a tank top had left the infield throng, shimmied beneath the inside rail, walked onto the dirt track, faced the onrushing horses and muscle-flexed like a body builder. Jerry Bailey, astride Yes It’s True, kept the front-runner in stride on the rail and passed to the intruder’s right, but Jorge Chavez had to check favored Artax as the perp threw an empty punch. Somehow, every horse passed safely, the stewards ordered refunded all wagers on Artax and Baltimore police downed, cuffed and arrested the trespasser. And Purple Passion finished third.

Six years earlier, as Barr and horse owner Milton Higgins III walked Who Wouldn’t to the paddock for the same race, the prize sprinter nearly collided with a wagon-pulling team of Clydesdales.

“You show up at Pimlico,” Barr said, “you never know what’ll happen next.”

[VIDEO: Fan takes a swing at Artax]

Cathy Rosenberger said as much through a different yarn from her days ponying horses. She guided a Joe Tuminelli horse to the starting gate and painted the sequence:

“A mile and a sixteenth, Saturday afternoon, 1976, maybe  — the apron is full o’ people. We’re gonna break right in front of the grandstand. We’re behind the gate. We’re circling. Everything’s just fine. Next thing I know, the horse I’m ponyin’ rears straight up in the air. Gunnar Lindberg was on the horse, he launched himself away from the damage, and then the horse broke its bridle.

“So now I have a horse with no bridle. I’m on the inside rail, and I’m working my pony, reining my pony; I’ve still got a hold of the horse around the neck, and I work him all the way to the outside fence, yelling for the gate crew to meet me over there and grab the horse. So we just worked our way across the track like cow ponies . . . and the crowd gave me a standing ovation.”

A zealous audience. A vocal avalanche. Trainer Gary Capuano remembered the cresting wave of noise as his 3-year-old star, Captain Bodgit, moved closer and closer to winning the 1997 Preakness.  In a near-rerun of the Kentucky Derby, Captain Bodgit’s final surge ended tantalizingly close. Silver Charm finished a head better at Churchill Downs, then outlasted Free House by a head and The Captain by two heads at Pimlico in one of the best Middle Jewels of them all.

Back then, Capuano said, late-gainers like Captain Bodgit had to contend as well with a Pimlico track that favored inside speed (a characteristic less prominent today). So he’d train his horses a little faster to try to get them closer to the pace.

“Back then, turnin’ for home, you’d better be there” toward the front, he said “or, chances are, you’re not gonna be there at the end.”

[VIDEO: Silver Charm holds off Captain Bodgit in a thriller]

Captain Bodgit’s unhurried style only fed the angst and drama of the Preakness stretch run for Capuano and the Team Valor ownership group headed by Barry Irwin and Jeff Siegel. “When they turned for home and he started pickin’ ’em up,” Capuano said, “I thought, he can get fourth, maybe third, maybe . . . “

The Triple Crown generally a rare pursuit for Maryland trainers, Capuano regarded Captain Bodgit’s near-miss Preakness in upbeat tones: “That was just a great moment there.”

Pimlico as mood-enhancer? The mention of the place immediately animated jockey Alberto Delgado, even after an off-the-board finish at Laurel Park. “I broke my maiden there April 12th!” Delgado exclaimed. “I’m not gonna tell you the year.”

“Wouldn’t that have been 1982, when you won the Eclipse Award” as the nation’s top apprentice?

“Well, yeah,” he said. “Anyway, that’s where I started. That’s home to me.”

A dream home, almost. Trainer Wayne Lukas commanded the 1995 Preakness run-up with Derby winner Thunder Gulch and audacious closer Timber Country before Delgado rode longshot Oliver’s Twist into the spotlight for Maryland horseman Bill Boniface. Close to the lead but trapped inside for a furlong to the homestretch, Oliver’s Twist finally found a narrow seam; Delgado sent him through it, into daylight, and pressed past Thunder Gulch near the wire.

“Thunder Gulch — I chased him in the Fountain of Youth, the Florida Derby, and I could never beat him,” Delgado said. “And that day [in the Preakness], I’m gettin’ to him. I go by him. Finally, I beat him! And here comes Timber Country on the outside.”

Running unhindered, Timber Country outfinished second-place Oliver’s Twist (25-1) by half a length.

Boniface had nearly done it again. Twelve years earlier, on a perfectly dreary day, he’d led Parfaitement and Deputed Testamony onto a blue van at his Bonita Farm in Darlington, trucked them to Pimlico for the Preakness and got a police escort through the Hayward Avenue gate.

After Donnie Miller Jr. sent the less-heralded Deputed Testamony splashing through a yawning inside gap and onto victory, the Boniface family merrily mud-trudged beside the hometown hero to the grassy infield winner’s circle. There, Bill’s 16-year-old son, Kevin, gave DT a celebratory smooch on the nose.

“There it was on ABC sports,” Kevin said, “and that really got me a long way with the girls in high school.”

Then a pause. “That was a special day,” he said, but possibly not his Pimlico favorite.

In 1987, Kevin busily helped his dad steel runners for the Maryland Million at Pimlico. By afternoon’s end, the stable had managed three victories, a Million Day first: Gold Glove took the Ladies, Angelina County the Oaks and Sean’s Ferrari the Nursery for esteemed TV broadcaster and Boniface family friend Jim McKay.

“I was so on those horses,” Kevin said. “I mean, I had the laser pads on Sean’s Ferrari because he had some shins just before he went over. And I knew Gold Glove — I galloped her in the field three days beforehand. And I had jeans on and a T-shirt, and I was just back at the [receiving] barn sendin’ ’em over. And when the third one crossed the wire and won, I remember runnin’ over and cuttin’ through the clubhouse. I just had to go the winner’s circle.”

For 155 years, that shared pursuit has filled Pimlico’s colorful biography and kept the pages turning. The next edition, publication date pending, promises more of the story.